Drill Baby, Drill!

Yesterday I attended the Ozone try-outs. One of the girls I coach during the spring season is on the team and three others were trying out. The first drill the team ran to get everyone going was the standard "Endzone" or "Mushroom" drill. The past two years, we've run this well-known drill on Paideia but with a small variation - the goal thrower after throwing the goal, moves to the sideline to receive the disc back from the goal scorer while the next player from the front line steps out to set up a game-like reset* cut (starting 10-12 yards laterally from the thrower, driving up line and then coming back in order to receive the reset).

While I was watching the drill yesterday, every one of the Paideia Girls after throwing the goal automatically moved to the sideline before remembering that the drill was not the same. Seeing how all of them automatically executed an element of a drill without thinking reinforced the power of drills.

I was talking to Tiina Booth at HS Easterns while watching the Paideia Boys play Columbia HS. We were talking about goal setting for games (the Paideia girls set goals for each half of each game). She said that she used to do this but has stopped because it increases the amount of thinking that players need to do on the field and she doesn't want her players to think.

This to me, is the primary value of drills. Running well-designed drills over and over again eliminates the unnecessary thinking that results in mistakes and miscommunication on the Ultimate field. In order to eliminate thinking all together drills must be run to the point where they become boring and feel repetitive. Teams will often try to run a lot of different drills in order to keep players engaged, but the irony of it is that the keeping players engaged only happens when players think and as long as players have to think think your team will not receive the full benefit of the drill.

So, identify the skills and tactics that your team needs. Design as few drills as possible that train those skills and tactics. And run those drills until everyone gets bored with them- while focusing most on the ones that give you highest value for time spent. If everyone is bored with your drills and can execute them with their eyes closed or while having a conversation (or while trying to run another drill) you'll know that the lessons of your drill have become ingrained.


*Just so everyone is clear, whenever I say "reset" I mean "dump." I prefer the term because it doesn't have the somewhat negative connotation that "dump" has. "Dump" also implies that the disc goes backward when a good reset changes the attacking space of the offense by moving the disc laterally, or in some cases, upfield.

The BEST drill for players at all levels

There are a handful of drills that I frequently use while coaching but none of them do I use more frequently and that have a higher return on time spent than the three-person marking drill.

There are a handful of criteria that drills need to meet to be great. The best drills:
- replicate an element of your team's offense or defense
- provide for a high number of touches to all players
- serve to also condition players
- can be challenging to players at different points in their development
- emphasize solid fundamentals

It is difficult for a drill to meet all of these criteria. When you are drilling a full team tactic that requires a full team or defense there may be only one disc for 7 or more players. When drilling some skills or strategies where you are trying to limit uncontrollables (particularly with players that haven't developed strong throwing skills) you may not even have a disc at all. When drilling a brand new skill or strategy you should probably limit the amount of conditioning as the focus of the drill should be squarely on the new skill or strategy.

Any drill that does not emphasize solid fundamentals should be thrown out immediately. Drills that encourage players to turn the wrong way when receiving a disc, throw to tight spaces, or make bad cuts (like short away cuts or horizontal cuts) should be immediately eliminated from a teams repertoire. I know this is going to come of as elitist, but anytime I see a team running the box drill (where players make short away cuts starting from right next to a thrower) I know that they are being poorly coached. This drill runs counter to every one of the criteria listed above. It shocks me that this drill is still being used. I'm sure if it has any impact at all it is negative.

So back to the three-person marking drill. The drill is straight-forward. Two players (one with a disc) stand 12-15 yards apart. Marker marks the thrower with the disc straight up with a stall coming in at 4. The thrower breaks the mark to the other player. The marker runs to mark the new thrower. This continues for a minute and half (time can be varied) at which point the marker switches out with one of the throwers.

The focus should be on the mark:
- Getting the butt low
- staying balanced: feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and able to move in both directions at any time
- taking away throws with the feet and body by short, quick shuffling (not lunging) to get into position

And the thrower:
- Pivoting
- Faking
- Staying balanced
- Increasing extension/varying release points
- Not travelling

To increase focus on the marking aspects, this drill can be done with the mark having their hands behind their back so the only way they can take away throws is by shuffling in front of the thrower. What players will find is that considerably more work is done with their legs than their arms.

To increase focus on the throwing aspects, this drill can be done with the marker fouling the thrower. Throwers can learn about how to appropriately call "disc space" and "foul." More importantly, if a thrower can get comfortable throwing the disc while being fouled, they will be composed when they aren't being fouled and even more so when they are throwing to the open side.

Every practice I run begins with this drill. As soon as warm-ups and stretching is over my team knows to get a disc and a group of three. I usually run through it twice with two of the variations but sometimes will run through it three times. In the beginning of the season I typically run it with no hands and then normal. Towards the end of the season I run it normal and then fouling. In 10-15 minutes the team has broken a sweat and gotten in some conditioning and put in quality time on the most fundamental aspects of both offense and defense.

By the end of the season even the newest players feel comfortable with the disc and a mark and are fundamentally sound markers. The more experienced players have expanded their repertoire of breaks on both the backhand and forehand side and have developed additional release points and extended their release points away from their bodies. All players are able to instinctively call "disc space" and "foul" at appropriate times.

A significant part of the Paideia Girls success over the past two years is directly a result of this drill and how productive it is for the time that is invested into it.

The drill is not just good for HS Girls (although I would argue that it is particularly productive here), the Brown men used to run this drill at most every practice back in the early 2000s. It's also a great drill for small groups of players doing work-outs in the off-season as you only need 3 people to get the maximum out of it.

-Kyle

Fundamental Drills for Offense (question)

Growing up in a straight stack (originally with no backfield reset) offense I feel pretty comfortable stating that the 2 drills that I find fundamental to that offense are the mushroom drill and the 3 line drill. Clearly there are more drills that can be done for a vertical offense, and there are many variants of these drills depending on how you want to run your offense. These 2 drills focus on the two main parts of the offense, resetting the disc and cutting downfield. I can easily explain the transition between those drills to play on the field for a young/new player.

I feel like I've been floundering with the horizontal offense. I can run it just fine, but coming up with drills that teach the basics of the offense has been difficult. Just like vertical I'm sure there are tons of variants of drills depending on how each teach specifically runs their H, but I was wondering what some common drills are that teams use to teach players how to cut in a horizontal offense. Especially stuff that people have tried with new players to get them to see the space created in an H-stack and learn how to cut in that space. Thanks.

Ga St Champs/Coaching in the Gaps

I wasn't going to post after just one day of the boy's Georgia State Championships. I'm sure many people are currently focused on the college regional battles (I know I am). But after thinking about it there are a few points I would like to make.

The state of Georgia High School ultimate isn't as weak as the girls. While average disc skills were lacking (usually 1 or 2 handlers on a team except for the top 3), the athleticism present was impressive. We (Paideia) managed to go 4-0 and will have another 4 games tomorrow if all goes well (last round of pool play followed by quarters and up). This seems like a lot of games for high school boys on a hot weekend, but everyone else is in the same boat. I'd be happier just playing 2 or 3 games on Sunday.

Pool strength presented an interesting scenario that I can't believe I haven't thought of before. Our JV team (in the other pool) seems to feel like the other pool was stronger. This might be the case, which would mean that we have a tougher road ahead for us since we will see their 2-seed in the semis and their 1-seed in the finals after they have (presumably) an easier game. So I guess it pays off to be in the tougher pool (??) if you feel pretty good about advancing, especially if there are 3 quality teams. Again, I can't believe I haven't thought about this before.

Lastly, I again realized how much I love coaching/teaching during a bye. Our trap zone was not looking particularly good, so during the "bye" for lunch we gathered the guys around, drew up our trap zone, then went shirts and skins while we walked through the transition of the trap a few times. It is such a great time to learn because everyone is cleated up, you have direct references to experiences in the past games to remind people about things, then you can directly apply those lessons to a game where the opposing team doesn't always know what you are doing. As much as I (selfishly) think timeouts are meant for strategic adjustments, I think byes are for coaching (although scouting and hydrating should be in there as well).

Girls State Championships

I got to coach at the Girls' Georgia State Championships today. The level of play in Georgia is still relatively low, and there aren't many teams. Groove (Paideia Girls) have dominated all of their high school opponents this season, and a good number of the college ones they have played. They are an excellent group of girls with incredible talent. That is why we were surprised to find ourselves down to a combo team from 2 high schools (told you there weren't many teams) 0-2 at the beginning of the game. Our squad was depleted, so we didn't have the handlers that we normally did, which presented a problem. We started on D with the wind blowing pretty strong cross-field. Our opponent ran zone and we fumbled the disc after a number of swing passes. This gave our opponent a short field and the scored. Same thing happened again next point. Our girls were starting to get frustrated. The only time they had been down 0-2 recently was when they were assessed 2 points, so we talked about it really quick between a points and settled down. We scored the next point and then we rattled off the next 12 doing basically the same thing (getting short field through zone and weak passing skills).

When coaching at Emory there came times where it was obvious that we needed to basically huck and play zone because of the wind. When completing passes becomes a variable the value of the field position gained by the huck increases. I'm glad the girls got their poise together and just completed passes the way then know how, but it made me realize that at the lower levels (perhaps with new players) offense is a burden that can really bury a team. It wasn't that our opponent's zone was so devastating that we couldn't beat it, we just weren't completing easy passes and giving them short yards (i.e. few passes) to a goal. Sometimes you just have to jack it to gain as many yards as possible and then hope that you can get a turn over down there so that you get the short field.

It is tough to get players with a bit of experience to buy into this at some point, perhaps because it doesn't feel like good ultimate. After all, how can hucking to no offender with 2 defenders poaching deep be a good thing? Don't we hope to not have to worry about completing the easy passes and playing keep away as long as it takes? Our opponent starting going to the same strategy (hucking) as the game got away from them, which was the right decision in my opinion. Again, I'm glad our girls ended up not having to switch to that strategy, but in the back of my head I kept wondering that if we didn't manage to pull it together and march it down the field to make the score 1-2 and get on defense ourselves would we have been willing to go with the huck & D strategy and would it have felt like defeat?

Lastly, I really can't say enough about these girls. Kyle has done an excellent job coaching them the past 2 (?) years. There are number of excellent seniors graduating this year which will be good for the college game, but the cupboard wont be bare when they leave since there is also a number of phenomenal sophomores and juniors behind them.

Paideia Cup Day 2

The 2nd day of Paideia Cup is over and was filled with ups and downs. Due to potential downpour later that day the first round of the day was played yesterday. That meant that we went straight to semis today which has us play Columbia HS (Anthony Nunez). Columbia had a tough game against Grady High School (Susie Mercer) the previous day so we knew they were ready to play and prove themselves today. The game was a great game, ending with us on top after double game point (9-8).

A few thoughts on Columbia. Kyle had mentioned their resets being particular good, and that was evident. At first I through it was another instance of our marks being too flat, but the Columbia players knew how to clear the reset and then fill in from the front of the stack. The thrower would almost always throw quickly around our mark hitting the reset and then swinging the disc. Their constant resets made our downfield defense difficult. They also threw what I call the "soft" (inside) break very well. In particular #6 did a good job moving the disc back to the breakmark side with soft breaks. Last compliment (although there could be plenty) is the level of athleticism that some of their players brought to the game. Number 3 (Jordan?) and #13 were just few of a number of defenders that really worked our cutters making it difficult to advance the disc at times. Fortunately we advanced, getting a few Ds after making some adjustments.

The next game against Hopkins (Jake Raisanen) wasn't so lucky. Word on the street was that this team was big and fast, and they lived up to the hype. With a number of players over 6' our short line-up was really going to be tested. In addition to their height they had a number of seniors on that squad, which became evident in the first few points. Our offense struggled to get open against older athleticism, and they forced us into poor decisions by taking away the easy ones. When they had the disc it was clear that they had been playing together for years. They threw deep often, typically to players that had only a step or two, and frequently with risky passes (through lanes and around marks). Almost all of these hucks connected, and what impressed me was the confidence with which they released the disc. During the game I commented that they were throwing the way that I would throw to my oldest friends, where you just know they are about to cut to an area so you throw it early giving the defender almost no chance.

We lost the game to Hopkins 13-5, despite playing very well. Our boys fought hard and did what they could, but we were out matched physically and experientially. I don't think they are attending Easterns, but I wish that they would. I'll question whoever wins the "Eastern" title if they didn't beak Hopkins at some point during the year. I guess that is just part of the wacky Junior Nationals scene.

Lastly, from a coaching standpoint: Both of the teams we played today ran an (at times) isolation based sideline stack offense. Creating the one large lane out in front of the thrower. Our original defensive adjustments were pulling people off of the players in the middle of the stack to potentially help with the isolated cutter. This worked well, but they still would get some devastating deep hucks off. I wondered if we wouldn't have had success with forcing back towards the sideline stack and using the dump defender to frustrate the open side and have them swing the disc to the side of the field with the stack on it. Hopkins probably would have just switched their stack-side, but in the transition we may have gotten them to throw something they weren't comfortable with. Maybe we should have just forced middle.

Paideia Cup: Day 1

Today was the first day of the Paideia Cup in Atlanta. It is a high school tournament that draws some of the best teams in the south east and up to New Jersey. The field was a little light compared to last year (where a Seattle combo team won it all), but it was still an illuminating experience for this first year high school coach.

We had been to Deep Freeze earlier this year, but it was a first tournament of the season and the competition was still covered in winter sleet. All three of the teams we played today (Page, HB Woodlawn/Yorktown, Red Bank) were well skilled and very intense. All had coaches, and clearly had an offensive scheme of some sort. We aren't exactly the most defensively diverse team out there (we run a zone . . . AND a man), however we were able to make defensive and offensive adjustments that really opened up the games. It seemed like other teams adjusted slowly to our tweaks, but those adjustments were happening. The teams that I've had the most success with were teams that were able to defensively make on opponent change from Plan A to Plan B. We were able to do that today, and it rallied us 3 wins by more than 8 points each.

The competition was very good (despite the somewhat lopsided scores), but it seems like playing against college teams has really paid off. We were so accustomed to getting few chances with the disc on defense that we learned to be more frugal with the disc after an opponent's turn. That was the difference in most of the games today. It wasn't that we were getting tons of blocks, but we didn't give them the disc back after getting possession. It was refreshing to see our players be that intelligent and patient. Our captains also did a (slightly) better job with subbing. We kept productive lines on offense, while getting our secondary players chances to get blocks on defense. As a result it seemed that everyone felt involved and was making plays. Morale was really high, but that is easy when you are winning.

Weather permitting we will play again tomorrow, so hopefully we will continue to play well and take home a title. I'm also hoping that we can teach the team one or two more defenses to try out. There was a time that a good poachy force middle would have wrecked a team.

Coaching at the elite level

So . . . why don't top level teams have coaches?

I've run into this question often, and while I can easily cite why college and high school teams need coaches (have to develop players with potentially little experience in a short amount of time), I don't know why or if elite teams need coaches.

Perhaps I am just in the dark. I know that Fury is coached my Matty Tsang, but that has only been for the past three years and they have been kicking people's asses for a long time. I think Machine has a coach, but I can't name another team that has a coach (again, I will point to my possible ignorance).

I've constructed arguments around where the knowledge-base is in our sport. The smartest people in the sport are still playing. In some cases those are the younger players in the open division, but even our older/more experienced players are still on the field. Why would a great ultimate mind be trying to coach an open team when they could be playing masters. But surely there are people out there like me who's careers got cut short due to injury, what about those people? Maybe it is the financial commitment? I kind of find that hard to believe since people pay out of their own pockets to be a part of this community (at tournaments, UPA regs, etc.) we've established that we are willing to shell out coin to stay competitive and involved.

An interesting case against my points would be Stu Downs coaching the University of Georgia. Stu is definitely one of the most experienced and smartest people in the game, so it made sense that as his family developed and age (finally!) caught up to him he would stay involved as a coach. But in that case it was college, where the reasons to coach are much more obvious and the effect he would have is obvious as well.

This leads me to a second question: do elite teams even need coaches? My gut reaction is to say yes. A coach can orchestrate the game play, can see what the opponent is doing and create adjustments to maximize his/her team's chance of winning. There is nothing about ultimate that wouldn't benefit from that . . . but then again I've never played on an elite team. Surely those teams already have captains that do the things that I mentioned, so why bother with a coach?

So that's 2 questions I would love to hear so opinions on?

Why do most elite teams not have coaches?
Would elite teams benefit from coaches?

Ultivillage Videos

I'm trying to live up to a bargain I made the Florida women's coach of posting more. I hope I am not boring people.

I just got 2 more videos from Ultivillage: 2008 UPA Championships and 2008 WFDF Championships. My first reaction was disappointment in the UPA video. They trimmed down to 1 DVD rather than 2, and it seems to be at the expense of content. There was no menu structure for pool play, and you didn't get a chance to see more of the games (even if only highlights). I'll comment them for going back to an elevated camera instead of the ground level cameras that have been used for the past few finals. They even used sideline cameras, which offer some great views of spacing and depth that end zone cameras can't give. Unfortunately the editing left a bit to e desired. The first half of the men's game the sideline cameras were almost always zoomed in on the thrower so close you couldn't even see the dump well. The second half was better, but they we to the end zone camera which was typically more zoomed out. The other problem I had was that the play felt stunted. We didn't see many pulls, and they disc would just magically appear on the field without any idea of what happened before. The commentary provided was good commentary, but it also felt stunted as there was no down time (between points and turnovers) for the commentators to add any color or discussion.

Contrast this with the excellent job in filming and editing for the WFDF video. The pool play and most finals were the same style Ultivillage has employed for the past few years, giving us a few extended plays during a game, but jumping from point to point. The finals (at least the men's) were excellent. There were three commentators (Match and 2 guys from blockstack.tv) that did an excellent job. The video was from an angle and elevated, with multiple cameras so they could bounce around as needed. But best of all we saw pretty much the whole game. The benefit of that, from a coaching standard, is huge. I can sit down the the kids and we can actually see what a team is doing on the field, we can discuss strategy and since there is relative down time between each point we can discuss before we have to start watching again. I would love to spend time this coming Tuesday (Tape Tuesdays) talking about Ironside's implementation of straight stack, but I can't see it on the videos. Or how Fury staged their incredible comeback, but the commentary doesn't add anything more than play by play. Instead we will be watching, and listening to the 2008 WFDF finals and talk about how team USA started calling fouls when they were down.

Hopefully Ultivillage (who I love for making these videos) will cover more events like WFDF and give us more stuff to talk about. I can watch highlights online, I buy the DVDs because I want to watch a full game and see as many of the games from a tournament as possible. I sent Rob an email to see if there was any way that I could get the full film from last years UPA finals . . . we'll see if that gets me anywhere.

Offensive Line-up

I was talking with one of my players yesterday about what was needed to have a successful offense. At the time he was of the mind-set that you need to have your "best" seven players on the field for offense (even if some of them are prone to turn-overs). This led to a conversation of what people do you need on the field to have a successful offense. We didn't really get to a conclusion before we had to head our separate ways, but I spent some more time thinking about it and I came up with the following:

For our game at Paideia (lets of working the disc with a few hucks here and there) I feel like on an offensive point we need 2 dominant under cutters, 2 excellent handles/resets, 1 dominant deep threat and 2 people to fill the gaps. Those fills are the people that know what to do when the opponent starts to poach and can do the things needed to keep the offense going.
Too many cutters lead to clogged lanes, too many handles leaves the cutting lanes barren. Too many deep threats means fewer under cuts and if we don't have those fills then the small things never get done.

I would imagine as you go from team to team and level to level the composition changes, but it remains important for a coach to think about what he or she needs on the field to score. Most of the people reading this have probably already gone through these thoughts, but it was a valuable coaching experience for our young player who had never really thought about that element of strategy.

Kyle deserves most of the credit for the conversation between my player and I, because it was something I told him about the way Kyle calls subs that really started the ball rolling for this conversation.